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Moment Art

This blog used to be about exploring creative practice through Moment Art. While the aim of the blog has changed, you can still access past weeks of Moment Art instruction here: Past Weeks

MOMENT ART

Moment Art is a creative work taken as a snapshot of a moment. Whether your interest is in writing, poetry, art, music, or anything else, Moment Art is a candid, Polaroid image of a certain scene in your preferred medium.

Many of us, myself included, will often go days, week, months, even an entire year without doing anything creatively. This is often due to long hours of exhausting work, at home or in the workplace, during which every ounce of creative energy is drained from us through cooking, cleaning, fighting traffic, reading and writing sterile memos, heavy lifting, thoughts of slavery while working for a boss that doesn’t know your face let alone your name, and during every ephemeral moment of downtime, we breathe, use the bathroom, complain, text, and “insert favorite social networking site here.” These fleeting periods of downtime are the perfect moments for divining inspiration and creativity, and it is these times that we will utilize for our Moments, whatever they may be.

Through this blog, I will introduce you to the practice of Daily Moment Art. This is not a course, and you may begin where you wish. If you find an idea that interests you, seize it! If not, find another that you like, or try to create your own. There are no rules here. The most important idea is that you begin creating.

After practicing some of the examples I will be introducing every week, you will become more comfortable in your creation, and it will become more natural for you. It doesn’t take much time, anywhere between 5 minutes to 1 hour will be sufficient, depending on how much time you can spare during your day. If you can only spare 1 minute, that’s fine too, just carry a notepad around with you to do so. And don’t worry about who will see your work.

Everyone will.

That’s right, not only will you develop the ability to create, you will also master the ability to share your work without doubts of your abilities. Natalie Goldberg, in her book “Writing Down the Bones”, tells how Zen masters in Japan would write beautiful haiku, and then send them, in a bottle, out to sea. This degree of non-attachment is what you will strive to achieve while you practice Moment Art daily.

Finally, the most important part of Moment Art is to have fun. If you’re not having fun, then you’re doing it wrong.